Even as one of the simpler mobile card games, Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels has some pretty interesting game mechanics that contribute to some very strategic and meticulous deck building. You’re going to find yourself refining your decks over and over as you play this game, and each time you do that, it’s going to feel more satisfying.

Let’s talk about the basics of building the perfect winning deck in Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels.

Balance Your Attack Ranges

There are three monster slots on each side of the board in a Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels match. These slots are numbered, with 1 being center and most forward and 2 and 3 being on the left and right sides further back. Slot 1 is for melee and chaos attackers, while slots 2 and 3 are for ranged attackers.

Knowing this, it would make sense that a third of your monster cards in your deck be for melee monsters and the rest for ranged. However, that math isn’t perfect, being that there’s eight monster card slots, and that’s okay because there’s still magic attackers to take into consideration. Magic attackers can be flexed into any of the three slots on the board.

I’ve found that the optimal setup is to have a deck of three melee attackers, four ranged attackers, and one magic attacker. While that’s not a perfect ratio, you have to consider the importance of having melees. When your board is empty, you have to place monster cards in order. With melee being slot 1, it’s crucial that you have a melee card available for use. Having a ranged attacker in the melee slot renders them useless until they dies, whereas having a melee attacker in a ranged slot renders them useless until they rotates into slot 1 when the monsters before them die.

The easiest way to lose a match in Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels is by having monster cards in slots where they’re unable to attack.

Prioritize “Fat” Monsters

In other card games similar to Card Monsters, when enemies attack your cards, they’ll deal damage and then take damage according to your card’s attack power. In this game, it doesn’t work that way. If I have a 5/5 monster and I attack a 10/5 monster, I kill it and my 5/5 suffers no damage.

This makes it incredibly important to have resilient monster cards. A stat line like 8/4 will allow you to take down some of your opponent’s most healthy monsters, but one of their cards with a lower mana value can trade into it and kill it off. A 4/1 will kill your 8/4 with no drawback.

That being said, you’re going to want to have monsters with stat lines like 4/7, 3/6, and so on. These monsters will trade into valuable monsters of your opponent’s while also being resilient enough to hold up against monsters with an attack at a higher mana value than the cost of yours.

Use No More than Three Card Colors

One of the most painful parts of having an extensive card collection is realizing that you can’t just toss in your eight best monsters and expect it to work. Not only do you need a balance of attack ranges, but you have to match your card’s colors as well.

In a 16-card deck of eight monsters and eight items, two card colors feels like the sweet spot once you’ve managed to collect enough cards. If your collection isn’t yet beefy enough, then it’s okay to go with three — but two (not including Silvers) is extremely consistent. This will ensure that the item cards you draw can be used on the monster cards you’re holding in a huge majority of situations.

If you’re including a large number of Silver cards in your deck — which I don’t recommend — then you can stretch this to three card colors. Silver cards are extremely costly and should be avoided if you can manage it.

Match Your Items with Your Monsters

Vocem Fox is one of the first ranged attackers you’ll get in Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels. A great item to use with Vocem Fox is Sight Bracers because they’re also a Yellow and they provide +1 ranged attack and +1 armor. However, although they’re a Yellow, Fighting Gloves would be bad to include because they give armor but +2 melee attack. Vocem Fox can’t utilize melee attacks, so this item card is useless unless you have a Yellow melee attacker.

This creates a situation where you need to be strategic not only in the attack ranges and card colors you have, but also your strategy: it’s optimal to try and dedicate a card color to a certain attack range. For example, if you dedicate the Yellows in your deck to being mostly ranged monsters, the Yellow items in your deck can all give ranged attack bonuses and will always be able to be put to use when drawn.

To avoid this problem entirely, which is something that you’ll probably need to do until your collection grows, I recommend focusing mostly on item cards that provide armor. Armor can be used interchangeably by both melee and ranged attackers.

Buy Card Packs Slowly

In Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels, leveling up will allow you to unlock card packs with higher levels and provide you with increased chances of obtaining rarer, more powerful cards.

Many people suggest that you not even spend coins on card packs until Arena level 20 and above. However, I think a more balanced approach is to buy one or two sets of packs every time you level and slowly scale that up to maybe two or three sets of packs when you pass Arena level 20.

If you hold off on all of your coins and spend them on packs all at once, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to get a lot of duplicates. Getting duplicates is not what you want to be doing, but if you have to get them then, you want them to be higher level cards so that they can disenchant for a higher value. This is why it’s really important to not buy loads of card packs right as you start the game.

One of the most fun parts of this game is experimenting with monster and item card combinations and finding a perfect balance between attack ranges, card colors, and item types. Doing it yourself makes it all that much more rewarding, and if you follow this guide then it won’t be hard. If you have any questions or comments, leave me a reply below and I’ll get back to you!

Be sure to check out our other Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels guides while you’re at it to get that extra edge against your opponent:

Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels - Beginner’s Guide Card Monsters: 3 Minute Duels - Match Strategy Guide